African Camp Fires eBook

N’gombe Brown thus worked hard through varied
and long hours in strict intimacy with stupid and
exasperating beasts. After working hours he liked
to wander out to watch those same beasts grazing!
His mind was as full of cattle as that! Although
we offered him reading matter, he never seemed to
care for it, nor for long-continued conversation with
white people not of his trade. In fact the only
gleam of interest I could get out of him was by commenting
on the qualities or peculiarities of the oxen.
He had a small mouth-organ on which he occasionally
performed, and would hold forth for hours with his
childlike Kikuyus. In the intelligence to follow
ordinary directions he was an infant. We had to
iterate and reiterate in words of one syllable our
directions as to routes and meeting-points, and then
he was quite as apt to go wrong as right. Yet,
I must repeat, he knew thoroughly all the ins and outs
of a very difficult trade, and understood, as well,
how to keep his cattle always fit and in good condition.
In fact he was a little hipped on what the “dear
n’gombes” should or should not be called
upon to do.

One incident will illustrate all this better than
I could explain it. When we reached the Narossara
River we left the wagon and pushed on afoot.
We were to be gone an indefinite time, and we left
N’gombe Brown and his outfit very well fixed.
Along the Narossara ran a pleasant shady strip of
high jungle; the country about was clear and open;
but most important of all, a white man of education
and personal charm occupied a trading boma, or enclosure,
near at hand. An accident changed our plans and
brought us back unexpectedly at the end of a few weeks.
We found that N’gombe Brown had trekked back
a long day’s journey, and was encamped alone
at the end of a spur of mountains. We sent native
runners after him. He explained his change of
base by saying that the cattle feed was a little better
at his new camp! Mind you this: at the Narossara
the feed was quite good enough, the oxen were doing
no work, there was companionship, books, papers, and
even a phonograph to while away the long weeks until
our return. N’gombe Brown quite cheerfully
deserted all this to live in solitude where he imagined
the feed to be microscopically better!

FOOTNOTES:

[21] N’gombe = oxen.

XXXVI.

ACROSS THE THIRST.

We were off, a bright, clear day after the rains.
Suswa hung grayish pink against the bluest of skies.
Our way slanted across the Rift Valley to her base,
turned the corner, and continued on the other side
of the great peak until we had reached the rainwater
“pan” on her farther side. It was
a long march.

The plains were very wide and roomy. Here and
there on them rose many small cones and craters, lava
flows and other varied evidences of recent volcanic
activity. Geologically recent, I mean. The
grasses of the flowing plains were very brown, and
the molehill craters very dark; the larger craters
blasted and austere; the higher escarpment in the
background blue with a solemn distance. The sizes
of things were not originally fitted out for little
tiny people like human beings. We walked hours
to reach landmarks apparently only a few miles away.